Chapter 57: Gabriel’s Archive
“I AM SORRY FOR the delay,” Tor Arrian said, standing behind his desk while his daughter scribbled in her ledger. “The forms must be obeyed. William knows this, and should have sent this letter . . .” here he touched a sheaf of telegraph vellum printed with the official seals and fractal codes in the vermillion tradition required of such documents, red as blood, “. . . with you. This delay might have been avoided.”
We had a full month for the paperwork to clear. The letter was straightforward enough, but the security codes were so data-dense that the telegraph—which could only transmit and receive data one bit at a time—had taken days to send and receive. The rest of the delay had no doubt been due to delays on Forum. The Emperor’s time was limited and subject to demands that even I can scarcely imagine, and even the direct line he’d given me—shared only with his personal staff, men and homunculi trusted above all others—was not sufficient to extract a swift response from Honorable Caesar.
“No matter,” I said.
“ ’Tis given us time to explore your wonderful institution,” Valka added, shifting in the seat beside me. “Truth be told, I could have waited another month.”
Though he made no expression, I sensed the primate approved of this statement as he moved from behind his desk toward the fire. “No materials may be carried out of Gabriel’s Archive, you understand. No recordings made. No copies.” He fixed his Imperial green eyes on Valka. “I understand, Doctor Onderra, that you have Tavrosi implants that allow you to record what you see. I cannot take these from you, and as His Radiance’s instructions make reference to your being granted permission to the Archive as well, I cannot bar you access. But understand that the information contained within it subject not only to our Strictures, but has been proscribed by the Writ of the Chantry as forbidden. Sharing that information is a capital offense, one which the Chantry would mount an invasion of the Demarchy to avenge. I trust you appreciate the gravity of this fact.” It was not a question.
Valka nodded.
“The Mericanii nearly destroyed humanity with their machines. Their evil cannot be allowed back into the universe. We preserve the knowledge and the artifacts the God Emperor and His servants collected after the Foundation War because it is our duty. But we have a duty to mankind as well, to preserve her against the dangers represented by that same knowledge. Lord Marlowe, if you or the doctor or any of your people violate that trust, I will have no choice but to recommend to the Chantry that you be handed over to the Inquisition. Am I clear?”
Still seated, I bowed my head. “Yes, primate.”
“Good,” Arrian said. “You have His Radiance’s blessing, and that counts for much. But we are playing with fire here. I have spoken with your Tor Gibson. He says you were a student of the Classics?”
“I still am.”
“Then permit me to offer you a word of advice.” The primate clasped his hands behind his back in an uncanny impersonation of the Emperor. “Not even Prometheus could play with fire without being burned.”
I could sense Valka’s amusement beside me, but for myself I shared the primate’s absolute gravity. I may not be a devotee of Chantry religious thought—few palatines truly are, I think, preferring some watery agnosticism with a few frozen bergs of devoted language over top—but I shared the Imperial horror of the Mericanii the way a child who fears the Dark looks askance at shadows even as an old man.
“I understand,” I said.
The scholiast ahead of us carried a glowsphere aloft in his hand. The device did not float as so many others did—for even the simple mechanisms of a Royse field were forbidden inside the walls of the athenaeum. Valka followed close behind with Tor Varro while Pallino and Doran followed with two others of my guard. We moved slowly down the spiral stair, feet rattling the old iron beneath us. Gibson kept us slow, one hand on the smooth rail, the other wrapped round my arm to steady him.
The light swayed, and its holder said, “Gabriel’s Archive is some of the oldest construction in the entire complex.” The speaker was Tor Imlarros, an old man himself, and the Curator tasked with the keeping of Gabriel’s Archive and the keeping of the keys. “Never thought in all my days I’d see the doors opened. Not been open since Aramini’s day—that was when Gabriel II ordered it built and sealed.”
“Aramini?” Valka asked.
“Tor Aramini was the architect. Designed this place. He was Gabriel’s own brother—the primates are usually frustrated princes, you know?” The light bounced and swayed as we descended. Similar lights—like lonely stars—drifted among the stacks on the iron levels as we descended, the mark of some lonely scholiast at his labors. “It was Aramini that designed the locks.”
“On the archive, you mean?”
“Those too,” Imlarros said. “But I mean the ones that hold the sea back. We’re below sea level here. You won’t have seen them, but there are great channels that run ten miles from the coast to here. We keep a reservoir filled. The novices go fishing, but that’s not what they’re for.”
He said this last bit with an ominous quality that all but forced Pallino to shout down from his higher step. “The hell does that mean?”
“The reservoir sits on top of Gabriel’s Archive. They’re meant to flood the chambers if anything ever tries to . . . you know . . . get out.”
“You couldn’t!” Valka sounded horrified, and stopped on the steps a few beneath Gibson and myself.
Imlarros did not break stride. His thickly accented voice drifted upward. “Those were Gabriel’s orders.”
“And destroy the archives?” Valka objected. “What do you mean get out?”
“You have to ask?” Imlarros replied. “Possibly there is some artifact of the Mericanii sealed in Gabriel’s Archive.”
Valka’s brows knit together. “You think there’s functional Mericanii technology in the sealed archives?” she asked. “And your Tor Aramini’s plan was to drown it?”
“Who said anything about drowning?” Imlarros asked. “The reservoir is meant to shield the rest of the compound from the radiation.”
“The what?” Valka almost screamed.
“Chantry’s orders. There are atomics planted between Gabriel’s Archive and the rest of the compound. The water is meant as insulation. To protect the Library above.”
Valka’s words came back tighter, more controlled. “That’s totally barbaric.”
Imlarros shrugged again. “There is no cause for alarm, doctor. We do not think there is any danger, not after so many years.”
“Famous last words,” Pallino remarked from the rear.
“The Chantry is thorough. They tolerate our operations, but the scholiasts have always made them uncomfortable. Religion and science are old enemies,” Imlarros said.
Gibson cleared his throat, and in a thin voice strained by the descent, said, “They’re not, brother. Only fools think so.”
For a third time, Imlarros shrugged. “You are a philosopher, are you not, brother?”
“And you’re an engineer,” Gibson replied, apatheia cracking with the strain of the climb. “Stay in your house.”
We came at last to the lowest level of the silo. It ran deeper than I’d thought, deeper than the tower above was tall, with halls opening far into the rock of the mesa all around, tunnels honeycombing the living rock, connecting to natural caves like those the Archivists made their home in. The floor was strange, not tiled or planked but a single piece of fused, glassy stone that flowed into the walls at the extreme edges. To one side, a space stretched high-ceilinged and wide as the silo itself, half a mile across. The omnipresent shelves fat with books and scrolls and other documents that lined the levels above were here too, pressed against the walls and into simple rows running straight across the flat floor, bolted to the glossy stone.
“The doors are up ahead,” Imlarros said, leading the way with his bobbing lantern. He led us along the opening, shadows retreating from the orb in his hand. “This tunnel extends for about half a mile beneath the reservoir.”
“ ’Tis the archive at the far end?” Valka inquired.
“Yes,” Imlarros answered her, “But it stretches all the way back to the core shaft and wraps around it in a big circle At least . . . according to Tor Aramini’s blueprints. I have never seen them with my own eyes.”
The doors ahead were like the doors of a hangar, huge and metallic, shining dully in the light of our glowspheres—for as we walked Varro and Valka alike shook lights of their own to life.
“Marvelous!” Valka exclaimed. “Simply marvelous!”
They must have stood fifty feet high, and nearly three times as broad. Massive gearworks studded their face and ran to either side. Somewhere along the passage’s half-mile expanse, the walls had narrowed, funneling down until they stood nearly the width of the door.
Tor Imlarros approached these doors, keys jangling from a chain on his belt. Presently he produced three huge iron keys—more medieval they seemed to my eye than any artifact of the Fifth Millennium and Gabriel’s day. He inserted each into a lock in turn, each twenty paces apart. By the rightmost one he stopped and pulled a series of levers in the door’s face.
“Brother Varro, Brother Gibson, we must turn these at the same time. Would you oblige me?”
“I can do it!” Valka practically leaped forward.
Imlarros raised a hand. “I would prefer it if my brother scholiasts assisted me, doctor. Stricture.” He said this last word as if it explained everything, which I supposed it did.
I helped Gibson forward, and the old man placed one knobby hand on the key.
“Are you all right?” I asked. His hand was trembling.
He glanced at me. “Fear is a poison,” he said, and to my astonishment, spat on the stone at our feet.
Perhaps I had not gotten my sense for the dramatic from my mother at all.
“On three, brothers!” Imlarros’s voice came from our left. “One. Two. Three!”
Click.
Click-click.
Nothing happened.
“Did it fucking work?” Pallino muttered from the space behind. His stage whisper caught on the hard walls and echoed far louder than intended.
Somewhere ahead of us through the door, a deep grinding noise arose.
Thud.
A ticking like the turning of some mighty clock resounded in that space, and the mighty gearworks began to turn, shaking off literal millennia of dust as the stainless steel teeth champed and bit for the first time since the Empire was young and the blood of the Pretender not even cold.
Gibson staggered back, and I caught him.
Valka cheered.
The bowels of the earth groaned, gears squealed, and the doors began to open. A foul air rushed out, tepid with the scent of stagnation, the stink of air undisturbed and still for too long. I was glad our light came from glowspheres, for torches surely would have guttered and burned out. The doors ground open until the yawning gap between them was wide enough for two men to pass abreast and stopped. I think I understood the levers then. They’d controlled the width of the door.
And the doors were open.
A stair ran down a long ways, descending straight for perhaps a hundred feet.
The air inside smelled foul. Gibson and I entered first, Valka close behind. As we approached the bottom of the stair, Valka held her light aloft, and its pale radiance washed over banks of metal consoles and rows of shelves lined with texts and artifacts of all description. I felt a numb dread pinching the back of my neck, and would in that moment have traded my left arm for my sword and shield-belt.
“There should be a light somewhere,” Imlarros said, searching along the walls. “Our Order was not forbidden light in those days.”
As he searched, Valka turned to face me, her eyes wide, face glowing in the light of her lantern. “Do you feel it? You can almost taste the history here.”
“I don’t like it,” Pallino said. “Doran, take Gaert and scout out that way.” He pointed over the centurion’s shoulder down a passage to the left. “I’ll take Vidan round the other way. Had, you and doctor stay here until we clear it.” He turned toward Imlarros, “You said this thing makes a circuit around the core shaft?”
“According to the maps, yes.”
Pallino nodded, blue eyes snapping from me back to his centurion. “Means we’ll meet in the middle. Double quick. Shout if anything strikes you as off. We should be able to hear.” And then he was off, grumbling the while. “Wouldn’t let us bring nothing deadlier than a damn knife. I ask you . . .”
“Are all your people like that one?” Gibson asked, eyebrow raised.
Watching Pallino vanish round the bend in the path with Vidan in tow, I said, “Oh, Pallino’s one of a kind.”
“Hadrian, come! I can’t read English!” Valka’s voice interrupted us.
We’d stepped into a kind of vestibule that ran forward a hundred feet or so to the great circular hall of Gabriel’s Archive. The walls were hung with paintings whose shapes barely emerged from the gloom, darkly oiled. Straight ahead, on an island in the center of the hall, was a plinth that held a single document under filter glass, safe in darkness for so many thousand years. Valka held her light up that I might read it.
The parchment inside was yellowed and badly stained by light and time, its edges crumbling, its ink fading away. The writing was English, but of an ancient mode. Not the block letters I knew well as Galstani, but a flowing script written in a strong hand.
“In Congress,” I said in English, and translated it for Valka, following the declarative first line with a fingertip. “July 4, 1776.” I squinted at the next line, at an elaborate character I decided must be a T. “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united . . .” I paused, realizing some piece of what this document was, and whom it had belonged to. Forcing strength into my voice, I resumed speaking. “Of the thirteen united States of America.” Unbidden, my fingers curled into the familiar warding gesture, the old sign to ward off the evil eye. “Mericanii,” I said, seeing that Valka did not at once comprehend. I’d known intellectually that Gabriel’s Archive would be filled with artifacts belonging to the machine lords, but seeing the ancient name scrawled there on Golden Age parchment was something else entirely.
As if on cue, yellow lights flared on, springing to life with a clangor and a deep thrumming noise from sconces high on the perimeter wall. Their light cast long shadows over formless shapes—foil sheets draped over artifacts, row upon row of filing cabinets and microfilm terminals.
“I’m going to need to learn Classical English,” Valka said. “I wish I’d thought of it sooner.”
I patted her on the back with my gloved hand. “You have plenty of time.” I moved away from the plinth, crossing toward a time-eaten standard striped red and white. A line of portraits marched along the inner wall, following along the bend of the main hall.
“Shouldn’t we wait here, lord?” Tor Varro called. “For Pallino to clear the room?”
I waved him to silence.
The first showed an elderly man, pale and white-haired in a plain black suit with frilled white collar and cuffs.
WASHINGTON, the placard read. I paused. “Washington.” The Brethren had mentioned Washington, had they not? But Brethren had spoken of a city. Not a man. Pondering this, I followed the line of portraits one to the next. Men and women—if mostly men—variously smiling or solemn. I remember their names: MONROE, JACKSON, JOHNSON, ROOSEVELT, TRUMAN, FORD, DELANEY, OVERTON, PEMBROKE. I followed the line, following Doran’s route along the curving hallway until I came to the last, where the first microfilm terminators began.
FELSENBURGH.
The photograph—no painting, this one—showed a man like unto the first: white-haired and dressed in black. But where Washington was old, weak-chinned and tousle-haired, Felsenburgh’s face was ageless as Kharn Sagara’s and handsome, with a sharp jaw and pointed chin. He looked almost feminine, with his wavy white hair in a tail over his left shoulder. He was rapier thin, his high-collared suit more reminiscent of a military uniform than court dress, with short boots and an impassive face only hinting at a smile.
“Felsenburgh,” I said. I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t place it. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
To my surprise, a voice answered. “Julian Felsenburgh was the last lord of the Mericanii.” Gibson had followed me round the bend. “The last human lord, that is.”
I turned from the man in the photograph. “How do you know that?”
“We all know it,” Gibson said. “The scholiasts were founded not to replace machines—as is often said—but to limit the march of science to prevent a second menace like the Mericanii demons from ever threatening humanity again.”
Gibson leaned on his cane. “Felsenburgh was a technocrat. A businessman. He took power promising his machines would end injustice and bring about peace. They did, and the people cheered him. When he died, the Mericanii controlled almost all of Earth, and he turned his government over to his machines.”
“Columbia,” I said, remembering the name Brethren had given me.
Gibson cocked an eyebrow. “I take it you learned that name on Vorgossos, too?”
I grunted my affirmative.
“Every scholiast knows the story. We are forbidden to discuss it outside the walls of our athenaea under penalty of the Inquisition. We are meant to preserve knowledge, not necessarily to proliferate it. Certainly not knowledge of the Mericanii. Or Felsenburgh. Every scholiast knows his story. It’s our story.” As he spoke, Gibson sank into a seat atop a low filing cabinet. Jabbing his cane up at the man in the image, he said, “He sold humanity’s soul.”
I was shaking my head in protest. “How is it I don’t know any of this?”
Gibson raised an eyebrow. “I told you, we are forbidden to discuss the history of the Foundation War—what little we still know, that is. Under penalty of Inquisition.”
“But I should have heard of him!” I protested. But I had heard of him. The name was familiar!
“Have you heard of Mao?” Gibson asked. “Or Mehmed? What about Vermeiren?” This time when I shook my head, it was only in ignorance. Gibson tapped his cane against the floor to punctuate his point. “Felsenburgh is nearly so ancient. To most of the people in the galaxy, the Earth is a goddess, not a planet. Not a place people lived. Twenty thousand years of history, Hadrian. Twenty thousand. To the plebeians, the Jaddian Wars—Prince Cyrus and Princess Amana—these are ancient history.”
Felsenburgh was smiling down on me from his photograph. “That was only five thousand years ago.”
“And how many hundred generations?” Gibson asked. “A mere thirty-one generations of your family is enough to take us back to the founding of your house. That was nigh eight thousand years ago. How many generations separate you from the God Emperor? You are his descendant—however distantly. A few hundred?” With exquisite ease, Gibson lay his cane flat on his lap. “There is more history now than even this Library can hold, much less any human mind. Felsenburgh was the great enemy of man—the father of daimons. Much of what he did and who he was is now simply the work of the Mericanii. Combine that span of history with the Chantry’s careful policing. You ask: ‘How have I not heard of Felsenburgh sooner?’ I say: ‘It is a miracle you have heard of him at all.’”
If you are a historian, Reader, perhaps you wonder at my ignorance. For have I not referenced the Golden Age unceasing since this account began? Have I not talked of Rome and Constantinople? Have I not spoken the names of Alexander the Macedonian and of Dante a dozen times and quoted Marcus Aurelius and Shakespeare? Kipling, Serling, and the rest? I have. All these curiosities I owed to the man before me. To Tor Gibson of Syracuse. But he could not teach me everything, try as he might. Much of what I have learned and referenced I have learned since I returned here to Nov Belgaer. A Poet-in-Exile. As I have written this account, I have read and learned much that was forgotten and buried. Read and learned because of this conversation. To arrest my own ignorance.
“Suzuha,” I said, remembering at last.
“What?”
“Suzuha mentioned him—Kharn Sagara’s daughter, clone . . . whatever. She mentioned him once. I didn’t think to ask who he was at the time . . .” Turning, I looked back into the face of the man who had hung the noose around humanity’s neck and kicked the stool. “Was it Caligula who said he wished humanity had only one neck for him to squeeze?”
Gibson looked on with me. “A common misconception. Caligula only wanted to strangle the Romans, if Suetonius is to be believed—and I’m not so sure he is.”
Felsenburgh didn’t look like a maniac. In his plain suit, his knowing smile might only have concealed some private joke—not the damnation of so many billion lives. Even now, the true history of the Foundation War is a mystery to me. I suspect it is a mystery to all but Brethren, who alone of all living creatures survives from those hateful days. Thinking about Brethren before the image of Felsenburgh sent a chill through me. Fewer than a million people had survived Felsenburgh’s machines, almost all of them from the earliest offworld colonies.
“Do you think he knew what he was doing?” I asked. I did not look at Gibson, but peered into Julian Felsenburgh’s pale blue eyes.
Tor Gibson took in a deep breath. “Do I think he thought his machines would enslave mankind and destroy it? No. I’m sure he thought he was a hero. I’m sure all these people thought they were heroes.” He gestured at the line of paintings and photographs depicting the high lords of the Mericanii. “But then, so few of us truly think themselves evil. They simply think good and evil matters of opinion, and seek to impose their opinion—which is evil—on good. Nothing is evil in its beginning, it only grows that way. The Mericanii thought they were bringing peace and freedom to the world, but they couldn’t control their machines.” I had nothing to say, and so let the silence stretch. Gibson broke it a moment later. “Do you know the difference, Hadrian, between magic and prayer?”
Now it was my turn to be confused. “What?” I turned to look round at my old tutor.
“Humility,” Gibson said, tapping his cane on the tile. “The suppliant prays to superior powers, while the magician commands inferior ones. The only problem is that the daimons were not inferior powers at all. Felsenburgh may have birthed his daimons—summoned them, if you will—but he could not control them. I said he sold humanity’s soul. I wasn’t being dramatic. Creating his machines was a Faustian bargain, one we’re all still paying for. I think he had no notion what his creations might become, which is why he should never have made them.” My tutor grunted in a most unscholarly way. “There is a reason why in Galstani our word for scientist,” he said the Classical English word, “is the same as the word for magus.”
“That’s why there are scholiasts,” I said, following.
“Gather all the thinking people in the galaxy in one place, put them in a tower, and teach them humility.” He shook his head. “Brother Imlarros derided me as a philosopher on our climb down here, do you remember?” I did. “The Golden Age ended because men forgot philosophy in their pursuit of knowledge. They traded a love of wisdom for progress, and it destroyed them.” In a small voice, he added, “The ancient Christians were right to name pride the greatest of man’s sins.”
“Thought I told you to stay by the doors!” Pallino came hurrying into sight, his man Vidan following on his heels.
Turning to face the chiliarch, my lictor, I said, “Well, did you find anything?”
“Room’s clear,” Pallino said. “But Valka and the scholiasts said you two’d wandered off.”
“If the room’s clear, there’s no harm done,” I said. “I was just looking.” I gestured up at Felsenburgh, as if the ancient dictator’s portrait explained everything.
Pallino made a frustrated sound and turned away. I caught him mutter something like, “. . . supposed to do my job when he won’t let me?”
“Pallino!” I said, and the dark-haired officer turned. “Thank you.”
We went past the portraits of the other Mericanii dictators and returned to the vestibule. Valka was still standing over the document in its plinth—or perhaps had returned to it. She did not notice my approach, but stood with head bowed, arms crossed. “. . . has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing . . .”
She was speaking Classical English.
She was already speaking Classical English.
“You learned that quickly?” I was unable to keep the shock and awe from my voice.
Valka looked up. “No! No, no . . . I . . .” she smoothed her hair back behind her ears, “I had the alphabet stored already. The sounds. I’m only practicing. I’ve no idea what any of it means.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
Valka’s face turned downward. “But you speak it, don’t you?”
“I do!” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I understand any of . . . this.” I flapped my arms at the room about me, at the document, the tattered flags, the microfilm displays, and sealed cabinets. At Washington and Felsenburgh. “I think this is going to take longer than we thought, Valka.”
“Longer than you thought, maybe,” Valka said. “But I’ve followed you around for decades, Marlowe. Now ’tis your turn.” Brushing past me, she raised her voice. “Pallino! Doran! Are we clear?” The centurion and chiliarch alike flashed all-clear signs from where they stood by one of the arched entrances to the main corridor. “Wonderful! Let’s get to work!”
And work we did.
Reader, you have heard perhaps that I learned to speak the tongue of the Mericanii in a matter of days. I did not. I learned to speak the English of antiquity as a boy—as you have seen. It was Valka who learned in a week. The details of our lives have blurred and blended with the centuries, that we have become one flesh in the minds of the galaxy. I fear I have done her an injustice in not chronicling her work much until now: the time she spent learning Cielcin from Tanaran while I slept, the ages spent poring over scans and holographs taken from Cielcin ships after battles, and so on . . . But I have not described its details because I cannot remember them all, and because to describe all Valka learned of the Cielcin in her years working beside me would be to write quite a different sort of book.
What she learned of the Mericanii those years at Nov Belgaer would have filled at least a dozen volumes, though we wrote not a single line. By Primate Arrian’s orders, half a dozen members of the Curators were posted at the gates to Gabriel’s Archive to ensure none but my party went inside, nor any document came out. The great doors were left open, but a chain-link fence and gate were installed before them. With the primate’s consent, I posted as many of my own men on the gate—anything to ensure the protection of the Archive and to forestall Tor Aramini’s bombs.
Of those days in the Archive, I shall say little. Much of what we read and discovered was meaningless to either of us: records of men and events and places unknown. Much of the microfilm had rotted, and many of the documents crumbled in gloved fingers, forcing us to resort to tools.
Valka glowed every day. The doctor was in her element, her joy plain to see. I wondered at the scholiasts’ strange sufferance of her. They knew she was Tavrosi. Perhaps they underestimated the fidelity of her memory—or perhaps they hoped the secrets of their library would get out.
Who can say? I did not ask Arrian or Imlarros—I did not even ask Gibson. We were allowed to read and to study and granted as much time as we desired in that pursuit. None challenged us, and no summons came.
A year passed, and two.
While Valka and I turned through Gabriel’s Archive with Gibson and Varro at our side, the men enjoyed their well-deserved rest. A cheer went throughout the Tamerlane, I learned, when they got the news, and another when Corvo informed the soldiers their time in Sevrast would count against their service. The twenty-year rule governing time in the Legions had been suspended in the face of the Cielcin crisis—soldiers served for life in those days—but each man’s clock still counted the days, hoping for an end to the violence it seemed would never come.
The governor-general had permitted us to build a camp on the deserted island of Thessa. The first of our vacationers set about landing prefabricated dormitory units and outbuildings to accommodate approximately five hundred troops at a time, with each group given six months’ leave to enjoy the island, to swim and fish and hunt in the high grove. Smaller groups were permitted to sail—literally sail—from Thessa to the surrounding isles of Racha, Jara, and Gurra, where there were small towns that welcomed half a hundred soldiers for their stories and their coin. How many pleb bastards were conceived on fishermen’s daughters in those years I dare not guess—though I saw the girls when my time to visit Thessa came, young things vanishing into barracks or the shadows of tall trees for an hour or a night. In Aea, to this day, it is not uncommon to hear a man boast or woman say with pride that the blood of Marlowe’s soldiers runs in his veins or through her heart.
The blood of the devil.
The devil . . . I have been called a devil since the day I was born, praised as the Emperor’s Demon in White. But I have met true demons—Cielcin and machine.
I am not one of them.